Nearly 100 protesters gathered Thursday outside the San Antonio office of U.S. Rep. Chip Roy to demand the Republican stop supporting billionaire Elon Musk’s work to dismantle large swaths of the federal government.
Braving the biting cold, demonstrators amassed in front of the congressman’s North Side office holding signs that read “Stop the coup,” “Deport Musk” and “The only minority destroying this country is billionaires.”
A vehement Trump ally, Roy has backed the president’s proposed tax cuts for billionaires and calls for mass deportations. This week, the congressman also introduced legislation to permanently kill off the United States Agency for International Development, which Musk has tried to dissolve.
Speakers including Bexar County Democratic Party Chairwoman Michelle LoweSolis — a retired Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for the U.S. Air Force — and Texas AFL-CIO Executive Board Member Marinella Murillo called Roy cowardly for putting his allegiance to Trump ahead of the people he was elected to represent.
Some 240,000 Bexar County jobs directly or indirectly support the federal government, LoweSolis warned. She accused Roy — whose district includes parts of San Antonio, Austin and the Hill Country — of betraying his own constituents by cheering on a plan that would decimate the local workforce and economy.
“Everything [Musk] has gone after so far harms the least of us, and now he’s targeting federal employees,” LoweSolis said. “In this community, it’s not just going to hurt federal employees, it’s going to hurt all of us.”
